Wednesday, 31 March 2010

North London based Crewd Recordings asked us to look at their existing website infrastructure. The result is this new website, where we kept the bits that worked and threw away the rest. There was no need to reinvent the wheel, much of the graphic design worked, but the Content Management System they had been saddled with was not fit for purpose.

Using the frankly impressive WordPress as a platform we built a new site from back to front. The management system allows Crewd to easily upload news and tag content from other sites and add it to there's - as specified. This allows them to keep their content as up to the minute a possible, so that when their Artists tour, they can document events as they happen.

Monday, 22 March 2010

According to the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8571210.stm) and other sources, web browsing on mobile devices is set to rocket over the next few years. And while there has been a rush to create 'Apps' for the iPhone - there are reportedly 50,000 apps available - it seems that people are not considering what their website looks like on a smart phone. While you can magnify page elements with your forefinger and thumb on the screen of an iPhone, or the magnifying glass on a blackberry - ultimately a cumbersome way of viewing the content - doesn't it make more sense to actually design your web content to work on a mobile size screen?

A brief investigation revealed that handful of popular websites do have mobile versions of their sites, but the majority of sites out there don't. So we asked ourselves why this is? Is developing a mobile site complicated? Answer: No, not especially. Is it expensive? Answer: No, it doesn't need to be.

What we discovered was that Web for Mobile Devices wasn't being promoted by that many web design companies - certainly in the UK - and or for that matter not being demanded by many people. But we suspect that this might be about to change. It seems that many people have skipped over the mobile website step in favour of developing an single function 'App'. But with 50,000 'Apps' available, it's a rather crowded market place. And then, does the 'App' really give visitors all the information they need to know about your company or service - or is just a fun distraction?

We decided that we would as part of our website upgrade, develop a mobile website alongside the main one. You can view our mobile site by visiting us via your smart phone.

If you like what you see, get in touch and see if we can develop a WMD (Web for Mobile Device) for you.